


love cuts the strings

by Verbyna



Series: rifle, scissor, stone [8]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Blood and Gore, Codependency, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, M/M, Psychopathology & Sociopathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 22:09:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15827907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/pseuds/Verbyna
Summary: There is nothing on God’s green Earth that can change what Eric is or what he’s good for.





	love cuts the strings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jedusaur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedusaur/gifts).



> For Jed, who asked for this 'verse and should always get what they ask for. Edited by SummerFrost, whom I thank profusely.
> 
> This won't make any sense without the previous stories.  
> Mind the tags.

When Eric was six years old, he learned how to hold a hunting knife so he could start skinning. His mama folded his fingers over the handle, and his daddy must’ve watched, but Eric mostly remembers the heat on the grass and the hot smell of it, how his hands slipped, slick with sweat and blood. He had cuts on all his fingers until the next summer, but they healed, and after Daddy put a rifle in his hands he stopped wasting Eric on the carcasses.

By the time he was ten, his mama didn’t trust him around knives anymore. She loved him, and probably still does, but all the same, she made sure her back was never turned to him.

There is nothing on God’s green Earth that can change what Eric is or what he’s good for.

 

+

 

Ransom doesn’t talk on the way to Providence. Eric knows he’s being scary, and he should put some effort into hiding it. He can’t; besides, he doesn’t want to. What he wants is to see if Jack will notice. If he’ll do anything.

One night back at the gas station, Eric watched Kent push a bullet into that woman’s body with his thumbs, meeting her eyes the whole time. When he was done he covered the wound with his palm and looked straight at the corner where Eric had thought he was hidden. Later that night the same bullet fell out of Kent’s pocket when they were sitting on the roof. Eric smiled at the sound, a knee-jerk smile that wasn’t nice at all, and Kent’s face didn’t change when he saw it. It’s all coming back now, how Kent made him feel human and let him be a monster.

He was inside Eric _hours ago._

Eric doesn’t want to be the end of Kent’s story. He’d only be the period, because Kent died in that closet as much as Jack died outside it all those years ago, but ending it seems impossible. Kent was taken outside the normal way of things. He’s not a man, he’s an empty consequence. He’s not supposed to die.

Jack will want Eric to pull the trigger for him. He probably wants this to be as clean as letting Kent starve was; all Eric has to do is be an extension of Jack’s will. Eric may be capable of anything, but Jack expecting him to follow any order he gives is a rope around his arms, his neck, choking out whatever life he still has.

The car keeps moving forward, pulling him along. Eric’s playing his angry breakup mix, the least personal thing in his music library. 

“Which of them would you rather clean up, hon?” he asks Ransom in a break between songs.

Ransom doesn’t say anything, which means he’ll do what’s necessary. He’ll go back to his boyfriend at the end of this, back to the surface world, and no matter what happens now, it will be the worst thing he’ll ever do.

That, Eric thinks, doesn’t go for all of them. But it’s close.

 

+

 

When they reach the Abattoir, Jack meets them in the doorway, framed like a picture. He’s covered in bruises. His hands stay clenched until he sets them heavily on Eric’s shoulders, keeping him in place to search his face: one second, five, then he nods and steers Eric inside, leaving Ransom to park the car.

Eric wants very badly to turn around. _Take me away, don’t let him--_ but he can’t do that. He’s something that happens to other people, not something that can be helped.

Jack leads him down long hallways with key-padded doors to the residential area of the compound. The rec room isn’t crowded; Fitz stares unblinkingly at Eric from one of the small metal tables, then gets up and leaves, followed by two of the guys who were playing poker with him. The third guy, who looks about fifteen, packs up the cards and jogs after them, avoiding eye contact the whole time.

Everyone knows what Jack and Eric are here to do. Christ almighty.

How many of them worked with Kent? How many of the people looking away from him and Jack were Kent’s students, his lookouts, his informants when they ran into a problem they couldn’t deal with? How many of them laughed at his horrible jokes or figured a hit went fine when they didn’t have to call him in?

How many, like Ransom, ended up in this line of work because they leveraged their skills against bad situations Kent put them in?

The room clears before they even sit down on a couple of still-warm chairs. Jack leans forward on his elbows and narrows his eyes at Eric, losing the composure he was keeping for company. 

“You shouldn’t have gone with Parse. For fuck’s sake, Bittle. Explain yourself.”

Eric breathes out.

“I was thinking he might gouge your eyes out if I said no. That he might take you out of the field, and then I’d be stuck explaining it to your parents. To fucking _George.”_

It sounds plausible. It might’ve actually happened, but that doesn’t make it the truth, and Jack just looks angrier.

“He shouldn’t have taken you. You know why he did it, right?”

Eric notices that two of Jack’s lower teeth are missing: he’s slurring his words a little, grimaces when his mouth gets too tense. He wonders how Jack thinks this will go, after Kent is dead. He can’t possibly be so stupid as to think he’ll ever be rid of Kent; every time he’ll look in the mirror he’ll see the scars Kent left him, every time it rains he’ll feel the mended bones. Every time he thinks there’s a solution to everything, it’s because Kent made him unbreakable in bits and jagged pieces.

“Why did he do it?” Eric asks, honestly curious to hear Jack’s take.

Jack works his mouth; grimaces at the tenderness. “He couldn’t take anything else from me.”

“So he took me?”

“He took you, and I woke up and he had you, and he fucking _knew_ what I’d think.” Eric waits.

“That he turned you against me,” Jack says eventually. “That there’s not _one thing--”_

“Thing?” Eric asks evenly. He lets the silence stretch, so Jack has a moment to think about what he just said. “Let me tell you something that Kent Parson was stupid enough to assume you took for granted. He can’t take anything from you. Not your reputation, not your pride, not your fucking sniper. He ain’t taking shit from you when he beats you up or takes me for a spin.”

If Jack might’ve been persuaded not to kill Kent before, that’s done now. He looks about ready to stab Eric, or send him to George to have his brain dissected.

It’s funny in a way, how Eric reckoned Jack’s anger would be cold and practical. He suddenly gets why Jack’s parents had George shape Kent the way they did; he gets why they gave Eric to him. Jack can’t hack it on his own. Jack was born compromised, and he’s been shored up ever since.

“He can’t turn me any more than he can leave you,” Eric says, quiet so Jack has to listen closely. “He doesn’t have a side. He’s always been on yours.”

He tries to leave it at that, and he’s almost out of the room when Jack speaks up: “He made me say your name when he was taking out the teeth. You were the point this time.”

“I really wasn’t,” Eric says, and leaves Jack to his contingency planning.

 

+

 

The phone rings at 0200. Eric doesn’t answer, but he has one new message.

He hauls himself out of bed and goes to the gym, then the range, then the gym again. He’s gone longer than this without sleep, but he wants to be tired enough to be unconscious tonight. He has no idea what will happen tomorrow; Jack’s left him alone, for once, and Ransom hasn’t come looking for him. He thought George would send for him, but she must’ve talked to Jack instead.

Message 1 is a few seconds of soft, even breaths.

Kent Parson can’t help Eric sleep any more than the exercise did, but he tried.

 

+

 

Nothing happens the next day, or the day after that. Eric is acutely aware that he’s a guest at the Abattoir, and not a particularly welcome one.

Fitz keeps bumping into him in the rec room, in the showers, even in the loading dock when Eric’s running maintenance on the spare weapons in Ransom’s car. He doesn’t talk to Eric. He just watches him, and makes sure he knows that he’s being watched.

Kent leaves a voicemail every night. He doesn’t talk either, and Eric doesn’t want to hear what he has to say anyway, or he’d pick up the phone.

What could Kent say? He doesn’t beg. Even if he did, Eric is in no position to give him anything he needs, like a running chance or a way to kill the part of himself that tethers him to Jack. That’s all of him - everything that’s left after Eric killed his uncle.

On the third day, Jack says, “I got George off your back.”

Jack sleeps in Eric’s bed that night. Eric turns off his phone. He wants to keep Jack and Kent apart for as long as he can, even if it’s just Kent’s recorded silence reaching out across the bed that Jack sleeps in.

 

+

 

A week in, he wakes up at 0600 to Jack whispering urgently into his phone by the door, fully dressed, attaching his various leg holsters. His face is scrunched up like he forgot about his missing teeth before he squeezed the phone between his cheek and his shoulder; he drops it neatly into his palm when he notices that Eric is awake.

“Today,” he says. “Kent’s in Providence.”

“Who was that on the phone?” Eric asks, fixing to get kitted up as well. His body does all the work. He throws his legs over the side of the bed, and the floor is freezing.

 _He’s_ freezing. It has nothing to do with the floor.

Jack scowls and redoes the Velcro on his thigh. “Just George asking for a round with you. I told her we have to move out. She can debrief you later.”

Eric takes whatever comfort he can from the easy routine of putting on his pants, thermal shirt, fleece vest, checking his bulletproof padding, from strapping on his smaller pieces and sharps. An oversized jean jacket over everything else, so he looks like a student. His Palladiums are conveniently hipsterish and silent when he walks over to Jack. They might need to hunt Kent down.

Eric was wearing these boots when he killed for Kent, he thinks, looking down at his own feet. He was wearing them when he met Jack. It’s only been two years; it feels like a lifetime.

He wonders if he could explain to Jack that the invisible line Kent crossed was, for once, not about him. That Kent wanted someone to be angry for him and had no anger left himself, and Eric wanted to feel human too - twenty years old and _real._ That the previous week was a mutual kindness, or what passes for that if you’re like them, and Jack was between and around them the whole time, and that should be enough for him.

But Jack doesn’t see them as people. Not really. He wouldn’t understand; if he did, it would change his mind about eliminating Kent or using Eric to do it. He already tried doing it himself twice.

“I’m ready,” Eric says, even though he isn’t.

And then the alarm goes off.

 

+

 

For such a large operation, there are precious few people in the compound. They work in teams, so they leave half a dozen at a time, and there’s only three people patrolling the perimeter on a shift. George and the support staff stay off base for security reasons; the medical team is fully outsourced, and from what the guys told Eric on that botched mission that ended up requiring Kent’s expertise, it’s just too fucking depressing to live here full time.

Kent, however, said he lived here for six months after Jack’s overdose. Eric hopes Kent’s fast about killing the patrol and the unlucky bastards who stayed the night. Whoever pulled the alarm, it was probably the last thing they did.

“The roof,” Jack says suddenly, looking up at the ceiling. “He’ll go to the roof.”

“What the hell,” Eric asks. “Why would he go to the least defensible--”

“Because he’s drawing me out, and the roof was our spot. Move!”

They come across the first body in the rec room. It’s Fitz, sprawled on the ground in his nerdy Hogwarts pajamas in the middle of a growing blood puddle. Eric squats to see where the blood is coming from; he gets stupidly choked up when he sees the ornate handle of the knife stuck in his neck.

Jack wouldn’t know it for a gift, but Eric pulls it out and wipes it on his pants before sliding it carefully inside his calf holster. Kent collected these for Jack, stole and bargained for them, made sure they made it to him one way or another. Larissa showed Eric the drawer where they kept them at the armory in Boston.

Fucking _Kent,_ who never learned when to quit.

Perhaps, like so many other things, that side of Kent’s survival instinct was carved out of him.

Jack leads the way to the stairs back by the loading dock, signaling for Eric to pick up the pace. They hit a light jog, heads low, past two more bodies. Eric doesn’t know them and frankly doesn’t care beyond trying not to slip on the fresh blood. He’s not even paying much attention: it’s only them and Kent now, and he knows Jack’s right and Kent’s on the roof.

He and Eric first understood each other on a roof, too. The bullet Kent used on that woman is in Eric’s go-bag in Ransom’s trunk.

They reach the stairwell and halt. While Jack punches in the code, Eric notes the blood on the buttons, then Ransom sitting in the driver’s seat of his car a ways off, staring resolutely ahead. Kent must’ve talked to him to have let him live, and Eric is blindingly jealous for a second, because the last thing Kent said to Eric in private was _I’m sorry,_ and that’s not good enough. It’s _not._ He wants more time, he wants--

The door to the stairwell opens with a faint beep.

Jack is more careful going up than he was crossing the compound. He signals for Eric to stay low, and Eric steals a last look at the car before following him. Halfway up, Jack pauses and signals for Eric to check his gun.

It hits Eric as really fucking stupid that he’s even here, as a sniper. There were at least three people on base in Rhodey who are better in close range than Eric is, so Jack really was that fucking petty, to have chosen him for this out of every option. If he’s to be Jack’s hands in this, Jack chose the only ones that will hurt Kent as much as Jack’s own.

This is not a person Eric wants to follow. Not here, specifically, but that’s a given. Maybe never again, if all roads in the future lead from this place.

But here Eric is, gun loaded, on the last landing. Here he is, still, blinking against the sunlight outside after several days in a neon haze.

It’s too soon. It’s too sudden, after the long wait.

His Daddy would shudder to see him gripping the gun so loosely, like an afterthought instead of an extension of his arm. His Mama would be appalled at the way Jack walks ahead, but Eric can’t even think about that, because standing in front of them on the dusty tarred roof, not fifteen yards away, is Kent Parson.

He says, “Send Eric away.”

“No,” says Jack. “Bittle stays.” To kill you, he means, but all Eric hears is _to watch you die._

There aren’t many things to offer to dying men. More life, if one can; a clean death, if they’re lucky.

A witness, if all else is impossible, so Eric says, “I stay.” He promises that to both of them.

Kent’s bullet is in the getaway car, and his knife is strapped to Eric’s leg; the gun Eric’s holding is Jack’s, and he doesn’t know where to aim it. Ever since they were eighteen, Jack and Kent were meant to die at each other’s hands. So where does that leave Eric? Where does that lead the barrel of Eric’s gun, so it does the most damage and spares the most suffering?

Eric can’t see Jack’s expression from here, but Kent isn’t even trying to gauge it, bright blue eyes tracking Eric because he knows it won’t be Jack’s anger that ends this. It was never enough before and it isn’t now, penned in as Jack is by it, linear and limited and raised to lean on people to see if they break.

Eric and Kent know what it takes to actually break someone. There’s only one person on this godforsaken roof who has any choices left, including the choice to walk away or see this through.

Last week, Kent whispered what he wanted. He thought Eric was asleep. He’d been trying not to think about it.

Eric makes the decision because Jack’s about to fire, and he can tell the split second Kent realizes what that decision is, because he runs toward them with a wordless shout. Jack fires his gun, and Bitty squeezes the trigger, and then his ears are ringing because neither of them had silencers and they were so close to each other even here, even now, at the end of the road.

Jack hits the ground first.

 

+

 

Eric leaves Jack where he is; the bullet hit him in the head, courtesy of all his lessons. Jack shot Kent in the side of his neck, aim knocked out by the blast that killed him, and there’s one more thing Eric has to do to fulfill his promise.

Kent is lying on his back. Eric puts the gun down and walks over to him, even though Kent’s still holding his gun and could kill Eric for what he did. But he won’t. Kent knows he’s dying and there’s only one place he ever wanted to die, and Eric said he’d stay to see this through.

Dragging Kent over to Jack is hard. Kent’s heavy, and it makes Eric’s skin crawl to touch his warm body when it’ll be a carcass soon. A _thing_ to be cleaned up, a case to be mishandled by the cops if they ever find the remains.

Eric wants one last conversation. One last hit of the understanding between them, a look that Eric can respond to instinctively and not be flinched away from, anything, anything.

He drags Kent all the way to Jack, fifteen endless yards. Eric’s ears are ringing too loudly to hear anything as he piles the bodies together, and Eric thinks about that door, how Kent pounded on it just to know if his life still had purpose or if Jack was dead. Kent’s lips are moving, bubbling up with spit and blood, no words Eric can read, and he’s too far gone already to remember there was ever more to him than Jack. Than dying by Jack’s side.

Eric thinks, _I’m sorry._ He pulls Kent’s head back by the roots of his hair one last time and lets it drop limply against Jack’s hand, memorising the texture for the long run ahead.

He steels his spine, turns away, and calls Ransom downstairs.

This is the place Eric’s future will lead back to: a mercy killing.

He is not a thing that can be helped.

**Author's Note:**

> unfollow me on tumblr @soundslikepenance or on twitter @sitdownlee


End file.
